Excel crashes when updating ACT OLE DB data

I've seen a few other posts on this same topic but never anything resolving the problem.

Using ACT! 2008 with Excel 2003 and 2007 on Windows XP, I can connect to my database using the oledb connection fine the first time. I save the spreadsheet and close it, and close Excel. Then when I open the spreadsheet again and try to refresh the data excel crashes.

The following is written to the app log of the XP machine. I've tried this on several machines with active databases as well as the sample database provided with ACT!2008.

Re: Excel crashes when updating ACT OLE DB data

I think I may have made a breakthrough. For Office 2007 anyway. Haven't tested with 2003 yet.

It looks to be a password issue.

When the OLE connection is defined you are given the chance to save the password. I've been checking Yes and clicking OK to the security warning that the password is saved unencrypted. That's fine.

While rummaging through the connection settings I noticed the save password box was UNCHECKED even though I had checked it when defining the connection. So I checked it, saved the file, and closed excel. When I reopened the file and refreshed the data it worked fine. To verify it was actually working I went into the DB and changed a few records then went back and refreshed... my changes were reflected in the excel file now.

For further verification I deleted the excel file and started from scratch. I was able to duplicate both success and failure based on the password option.

Further yet... I tried to create a connection and NOT save the password and it bombs out before it can even pull in the data on the initial connection.

So right now, from my view, it seems that the system is expecting a password, doesn't get one, doesn't know what to do next and crashes. Is it designed to prompt me for a password at that point? Sure seems like it should be... but I never get a prompt.

I'm off to test this on my operational systems. I'll report back with success/fail.

Re: Excel crashes when updating ACT OLE DB data

Under the Dependencies folder of your original source media, you should find 2 .MSI files. One called extensibilityMSM.msi, the other called "lockbackRegKey.msi". Please install both of these files to see if this resolves the issue you have encountered and post back.

Re: Excel crashes when updating ACT OLE DB data

Now that you have these 2 pieces installed, I would like you to Uninstall ACT! and then Reinstall it. I think that there may be a dependency relationship that needs to be established now that these extra pieces are in place. The reason that these components are not part of the original install is that chaining MSI files during an install causes a failure in the overall Installation routine.